Another unique feature of the Cinque Ports Hundred might be the TRs in the grid references. Though always preceded in the route description by 'GR' (e.g. GR TR 330 581), there are lots of them between Leg 6 and the finish. There are also, of course, lots of Turn Right instructions, e.g. 'at f-post, TR (180)' - 'Turn Right on bearing 180 degrees'.

If your pdf reader or text editor permits paragraph splits, the last thing on a printed page might be e.g. 'GR TR 330', which doesn't mean 'Turn Right on bearing 330 degrees'. Obvious now, but when you've been out on your feet for two nights the last thing you need is an opportunity to mis-read your by then dog-eared route description.

Hi Peter - Yes, I can recall some canal walking on previous hundreds - and a section of disused mineral line at night on the Durham Dales 100 (I fell asleep on my feet because it was so devoid of incident) but what I really meant was the flattest recorded section in an RD as a single "checkpoint to checkpoint" leg. You may have a winner there...

The CP 100 leg 7 may well appear to be flatter still. Apart from some lumps in the last field before New Romney which are reputedly the remnants of Roman era salt panning any ascent is spread over so long distance to be imperceptible. But its only 3.2 miles and there will have been 3 mile stretches on canal bank or similar on previous hundreds that were flatter.

Don't be fooled though, at other points on the route you will accumulate 50ft of ascent and be less than 50 lateral feet from where you started!

One way to keep up to date with route changes is to download the accompanying GPX file and display the latest route using one of the online mapping sites such as GPXEditor, BikeHike, or RouteBuddy if you use a Mac. You DON'T have to have a GPS device or intend to use the GPX route/track file on the event - and I wish I'd realised that before I investigated mapping software!

If you can display both the latest and previous GPX files simultaneously (GPXEditor does this), you can see any major (non-trivial) changes, which should be reflected in the latest route description. Currently, for the Cinque Ports, this appears to be the first few paragraphs of Leg 6, plus Leg 12. (The Checkpoint Map also provides a route overview, the latest and previous versions of which might be compared side by side in browser tabs.)

Though it would be helpful for successive route descriptions to be accompanied or prefaced by a summary of major changes (this was done well for the N Yorkshire Hundred following requests), it's ultimately up to participants to make sure they are using the most recent route version(s), of which there may be many yet to come. If you choose to do early recces or make use of previous variants, you're trading off useful pre-event info with important later changes.

So I have just clicked onto the website and found the Route has now been updated again. Whilst I appreciate this is necessary when planning a route I'm sure you can appreciate there is a lot of text there to read and to now compare this new edition with the last one to see what changes have been made will take some time. As I am personally unable to reccy the walk due to living so far away I am reliant on plotting the route well in advance in order to try and work out terrain (especially on night sections) and identify those sections which I can 'read ahead' to aid navigation....
My question therefore is this - Is there not a way to itemise where the changes have been made? eg Stage 1, second paragraph, so that it makes the whole process a little simpler for us advanced planners? I now have to re-read the full route and check it against the map in its entirety....I may be gone some time ;-)

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